Mistake on Extremity

I have been pondering about the mistakes that we as people make, whether as an individual, as a group, and even as a whole nation. And I think people continue to make one mistake — extremity.

How do I mean?

Quoting myself from a previous post, “Life is structured a way that allows us to make many mistakes”. As such, in life we continue to make mistakes and that is fine, but even though the mistakes may seem different, there is one thing in common — It’s that they either do and focus on only one thing or they do one thing too much. Hence, extremity.

It may seem that sometimes people are changing, where they are choosing something else in life, yet they are making the same mistake without realizing it.

To become an integrated human and a full person, humans need to work on their body, mind, and spirit. Yet, when we think of all the people we know, we can probably count with one hand just how many of them consciously work on all three aspects of ourselves, of a human being. This days in the information age, people have become very mind-dependent. The other two aspects of life are severely overlooked… hence all the increase in illness, chronic diseases, obesity, harms we are doing to each other, and lack of connection with nature and our own nature.

To speak on an everyday perspective, people take the path of extremity when they choose to focus on one thing in life, such as career, money, romantic relationship, materialistic possession, a hobby, etc. You name it. People would seem to find happiness in that one thing in particular, and like a radar, they just zoom in on it. And then they find themselves with huge disappointment when they have to face the other parts of their lives. As such, they become even more focused and addicted on the ONE thing that makes them happy. What a vicious cycle.

We can agree that people who do that often appear disconnected with parts of their lives. We can also agree on that when people do that, they will eventually run into the face of drama and disaster, and they end up more disappointed and broken than ever. If they learn, they will begin to strike a balance in life. If they don’t learn, they will search the next thing, next addiction, and repeat the pattern.

To sum it up, the biggest problem that people, as individuals, as groups, as nations, encounter are the things that for an extended period of time, they either spend all their time on or that they overlook because they are busy focusing on one thing after next. They mistake on extremity. Excess of anything always creates harm.

That’s my thought of the day. A balance in life is what we really need. It is not that one thing is bad, but too much of anything is almost always bad. Not only too much of one thing will hurt us. The things that we neglect will one day catch up to us.

2 Responses

Great post! I’m guilty of this myself, focusing on one aspect, to the detriment of the rest, thus losing balance. Somewhere along the way, I bought into the belief that to be happy we need to focus on one thing (I think I first heard it from the movie ‘City Slickers’), when in reality, a balance and variety is what we need.